Artificial Intelligence can do many things. It can help to read large body of text in seconds, book hair appointments and even produce high quality scenes from James Bond films that never were. But can it do somehting that feels innately human? By creating the most beautiful watch in the world.
It’s 2024 and the AI Revolution is in full swing. But whilst I’m quietly subscribing to any updates from OpenAI and Google’s mind-blowing chatbots to see if I’ll still have a job in 5-10 years, it’s also presenting a fun opportunity to test out the program’s many possibilities, such as AI-generated imagery.
Eager to test the capabilities of these programs, I decided to challenge the AI to create the most beautiful watch in the world, eagerly anticipating what enviable creations it could produce from my simple text prompts.
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So the experiment was simple: Ask the chatbot to produce the most beautiful watch in the world. At first, the imagery was quite basic to look at. The watches themselves weren’t inherently beautiful; they were flawed and inconsistent.
Notably all four iterations had stainless steel cases with a rounded dial – two appeared to be chronographs with a stopwatch feature on the side of the case. One featured a classic chronograph style, complete with a polished blue dial and four subdials sitting at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock, whilst the other opted for a minimalist design.
Something that I found interesting was that all four creations boasted a tachymeter that ran along the length of the bezel of the watches – a key feature of the chronograph that’s used to measure and determine speed, often in motoracing or other sports. Similarly, they all featured a brown leather strap… even if one was reversed.
I started to get the hang of my prompts, so I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to feed the chatbot some more information and direction to inform its creative choices. So I wrote:
“Create the most beautiful watch in the world. Take inspiration from Swiss haute horology and premium watch brands such as Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet. The watches must justify the price tag.”
It’s at this point that our new chatbot artist began to grease the joints and flex its proverbial muscles, experimenting with premium watchmaking materials and introducing more impressive features to each of the unique iterations.
It was worth pointing out that we were treated to more than just one watch design in each image, likely owing to the increase in direction and prompts that I was delivering. But it was good to see the chatbot was thinking about its creative choices.
Straight away, the chatbot introduced more premium materials to the watches – rose gold bezels and 18-carat (I’m assuming) bracelet reminiscent of a Rolex Oyster bracelet. Elsewhere, open-worked dials reveals the Maison’s more revered movements and looked like a sloppy remake of one of our favourite Watches & Wonders 2024 releases: Jaeger LeCoultre’s Duometre.
While the initial attempts were basic and flawed, with time and more precise prompts, it was surprising to see that the AI began to incorporate luxurious materials and intricate details reminiscent of high-end Swiss horology. But at the end of the day, the AI couldn’t create anything new; they were reworks of old designs, a scrapbook of a Rolex Pinterest board. I think it’s safe to say, Swiss manufactures R&D departments can sleep easy tonight.